AD: City Harvest: Imperfect Food, Perfectly Nutritious

Imperfect Food, Perfectly Nutritious

CITY HARVEST | Honoring Food + People

https://www.cityharvest.org

"A great concept might be structured as a playful metaphor, an engaging analogy, or pose a question to a viewer. Whatever the approach, a concept's first goal is to hook the viewer. Great concepts succeed at communicating because they captivate the viewer and demand attention." —Craig Smallish

City Harvest is a non-profit organization in New York City that has pioneered practical usage of excess food since 1982. Their bold goal is to end hunger in communities throughout New York City utilizing creative approaches such as food rescue, distribution, and education. Many people simply do not have access to food. Additionally, access to healthy and affordable food is a struggle that many New Yorkers experience on a consistent basis. In New York City, nearly 1.4 Million people struggle to put food on their table all the while there are 55 million pounds of excess pounds of excess food each year (City Harvest, n.d.).

City Harvest seeks to alleviate the immediate and long-term needs for those who do not have access to healthy and affordable food by providing fruits and vegetables in their Mobile Market, providing free pick-up and delivery of excess food donations to the local soup kitchens, in addition to working with vendors and food retailers to help increase their ability to provide and sell healthy food to their consumers. City Harvest also provides educational services about the basics of nutrition and how to shop for and prepare healthy meals on a budget. By providing food, product, resources, and education, City Harvest reduces the environmental impact that is created by having excess food go to waste.

DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS

Headline: Avenir Heavy | Subhead: Avenir Heavy | Copy: Minion Pro Medium

For the Imperfect Food, Perfectly Nutritious campaign, the food was used as the spokesperson. This campaign speaks to anyone who can donate and also to everyday consumers who buy food. The campaign is saying that just because something does not look appealing, it does not mean that the food needs to be thrown away. For example, a spoiled, browned banana, may not be edible by hand, but it is great to use to make banana pancakes or banana bread. An over ripened orange may not be good to eat by hand, but it makes great orange juice. Food also lives up to a beauty standard, which leads to food being wasted. Every year, seventy-two billion pounds of food is lost each year, not including waste at home (Feeding America, n.d.). Generation One (2013) estimates that seventy-two billion pounds of food equal to sixty billion meals being wasted (as cited in National FFA Organization). Sixty billion meals, assuming the average person eats three meals is a day, is twenty billion people not receiving meals. This ad campaign is letting people see food in a new way.